What’s Your Personality Style During Change and Transitions?

Change is inevitable. Resisting it, however, can make life more painful. While some people love change, others loathe it, and everything in between.

To better navigate change, start by identifying your instinctual style during transitions. In this post, you’ll discover the 5 different personality styles during transitions. This will help you find constructive ways to navigate change with yourself and others.

Are you:

· an Explorer, constantly chasing the new?

· a Stabilizer who resists deviations from the status quo?

· an Adapter, rolling with whatever comes?

· an Initiator who goes into fix it mode right away?

There are strengths and weaknesses to each approach.

The Creator

Yet the most adaptive mindset is that of a Creator — one who fluidly combines elements of Explorer, Stabilizer, Initiator, and Adapter depending on circumstances. By practicing this versatile, whole-brained approach, you can master change with creativity and resilience.

Here’s how to shift to a Creator mindset and navigate change with agility:

Know Your Current Default Style

When change hits, we tend to revert to our default personality style in transitions and each one has it’s weaknesses if overused. For example:

• Explorers relish change and novelty but lack follow-through. They flit between shiny objects.
• Stabilizers avoid and oppose change, craving predictability and order. They move cautiously, if at all.
• Initiators spearhead change and rally others to follow. But they often rush to half-baked solutions, losing patience when things don’t resolve quickly.
• Adapters go with the flow, being supportive of whatever comes. Yet taken too far, they won’t set important boundaries and can burn out from sacrificing too much for others.

Seeing your instinctual tendencies helps you balance them with strategies outside your comfort zone. The goal: Respond to change from a place of conscious choice rather than unconscious default reactions.

Cultivate Beginner’s Mind

When change hits, even the most open-minded person can contract and cling to what they know. A beginner’s mindset counteracts this, by approaching circumstances with fresh eyes unclouded by preconceptions.

To cultivate a beginner’s mindset:

- Let go of judgments and assumptions about people or situations.

- Adopt curiosity over criticism, asking questions over making declarations.

- Imagine you’re encountering the situation for the first time.

- Focus on the present moment over past experiences or future worries.

Each moment births something new. Drop hardened perspectives and see with an innocent, creative mind.

Activate an Explorer’s Deep Creativity

To shift to your inner Explorer, use your imagination beyond business-as-usual to find unconventional solutions.

Some ways to spark Explorer creativity:

- Brainstorm without judgment, allowing wild ideas to percolate.

- Engage the arts — storytelling, visual arts, music, poetry, dance.

- Spend time in nature absorbing its inventiveness.

- Have fun! Laughter and playfulness spark unorthodox connections.

- Surround yourself with creative people to catalyze cross-pollination.

By breaking mental ruts, you gain access to the novelty that change demands. Don’t just think outside the box — dissolve the box entirely!

Implement with Initiator Focus

Once inspiration strikes, avoid the Explorer tendency to flutter off. Shift to your inner Initiator to drive implementation. Their tenacity and clarity of vision turn ideas into action.

After brainstorming possibilities, make decisions. Chart precise goals and timelines for building the future. Envision the change as already accomplished — how does it look and feel? Let this vision direct priorities and efforts.

Rally support by communicating benefits. Inspire people to join you as active participants, not passive recipients. Collaborate while retaining focus on the North Star vision.

Implementation requires synthesizing possibilities into a coherent roadmap and galvanizing stakeholders into motion. Initiate change boldly yet strategically.

Provide Stabilizer Grounding

As change accelerates, people crave reassurance. Shift to your inner Stabilizer to provide steadiness amid the turmoil. A calm, grounded presence, and thoughtful approach can ensure a smooth transition.

Offer empathy without sugarcoating challenges. Clarify how changes align with core values and strengths. Highlight elements of continuity amid upheaval. Allow space for processing concerns before rushing ahead.

Be a sounding board for people’s worries. Then redirect focus to constructive actions within each person’s control. Provide resources and skill-building to ease transitions.

With compassion and pragmatism, you help people feel anchored in their best selves despite external flux. Stabilizers transmute fear into practical solutions.

Guide with Adapter Support

The depth of change can feel disorienting, especially when forced upon us. Shift to your inner Adapter to guide people through the inevitable chaos, confusion and grief so the can find acceptance.

Listen without judgment. Make time and space for people to share feelings. Validate emotions while gently refocusing on creative solutions vs. circular complaints.

Allow yourself to feel vulnerable and create a safe space for others. Model finding meaning and growth during difficulty. Help people reconnect to their purpose and strengths.

Adapters ease transitions with care, patience, acceptance and understanding. Their resilience inspires hope within themselves and others.

Integrate Opposites

The Creator integrates Explorer innovation, Initiator determination, Stabilizer groundedness and Adapter compassion. By practicing shifting between styles as circumstances dictate, you can respond to change with agility.

Don’t simply gravitate to what’s comfortable. Lean into opposites to balance your tendencies. Cultivate empathy for those with different approaches. Blend best practices to transcend trade-offs.

Detach from fixed identities to access a fluid, ever-evolving sense of self. You are not defined by a single static style. Like water, be willing to take the shape that serves the moment.

Mastery of change requires transcending binaries of new/old, action/inaction, thinking/feeling. Integrate seeming opposites into creative syntheses. Adopt a Creator mindset for optimal innovation, implementation, care and meaning.

The Future Beckons

External changes will continue arising, outside your control. But your response lies within your power. How will you meet this transformational moment?

• The Creator steps forward with Beginner’s Mind…seeing infinite possibilities unfettered by the past.
• The Creator responds with Explorer Curiosity…embracing the unknown as a gateway to creative solutions.
• The Creator charts the course through Initiator Vision…inspiring people into courageous action from their highest selves.
• The Creator provides Stabilizer Grounding…anchoring people through struggle into growth and meaning.
• The Creator eases transitions with Adapter Compassion…helping people rediscover strength and purpose amid loss.

When you hold space for others, you transform yourself. By working skillfully with change, you create an extraordinary life. The deeper the change, the more expanded your capabilities become.

External change brings internal growth. The Creator steps forward with empathy, wisdom and vision to unleash dormant potential in themselves and others. All great innovations arise from those who consciously engage the future.

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If you’re still unclear about which style is your dominant one, or if you want to see how balanced you are… Take the E.S.I.A.C. Quiz. You’ll receive an eBook that includes:

• the quiz
• a description of the 5 styles in more detail,
• a map of how each moves through change
• questions to pose to your team.

Take the ESIAC Transitions Personality Style Quiz here

Let me know your thoughts on personality styles when it comes to change and transitions.